


Way Back Home

by zarduhasselfrau



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 900 words of soft musing, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Slow Dancing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 12:31:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18591334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zarduhasselfrau/pseuds/zarduhasselfrau
Summary: There’s another dance. It was gentle, it was private, and it was rare. No Saturday night performance put on for himself, for an onlooking crowd, for the stage lights of Brooklyn buildings and the curtains of rain. He can’t remember the steps to this one either, and he cares. He cares so bad it aches.OR: Bucky Barnes and the dances he can't remember.





	Way Back Home

There’s a dance Bucky can’t remember the steps to, and he doesn’t care. It had a little swing in it, some bounce and hop. Just blurs of arms, sweeping a girl off her feet, the entire room bouncing up and down so that the memory makes him nauseous. He can’t remember the tune of the girl’s name or the melody in her voice, or anything about her face. She is unimportant, the dance was unimportant. What seems to have mattered to his brain, dubious though its cognitive abilities may be, is that it happened. The memory is warm and he doesn’t want to dance like that again. It suffices.

There’s another dance. (He knew so many, almost all of them blur together into that one dizzying memory of swing.) But this one is different. This one stands out, and he knows why. It was gentle, it was private, and it was rare. No Saturday night performance put on for himself, for an onlooking crowd, for the stage lights of Brooklyn buildings and the curtains of rain. He can’t remember the steps to this one either, and he cares. He cares so bad it aches.

It’s not even a firm memory. It refuses to solidify. It shakes and slips from his finger and blurs with the carpet. It’s like trying to hold wet clay or watching Steve paint with watercolours. (That’s a solid memory. Steve’s devastating ‘wet puppy in the rain’ eyes directed at an art shop, the time it took him to save up the money, the weight of the tiny thing in his bag, Steve’s hug. He’d rationed those things out for half a year. Bucky wonders if some museum somewhere has Steve’s first shaky work with them, wonders if he’d even recognise his own face if he saw it, wonders if any old smart-ass historian can look at the brief mistake where Bucky’s hair bleeds out onto the white paper and know about lips pressed against a cheek.)

The liquid memory is more a feeling than anything. A feeling of home – a specific home, the shitty and freezing one where they had each other and that was enough. It’s all senses, not facts. Faint city lights in straight, narrow lines. Blinds? Were there blinds? Car horns, background noise, Brooklyn moving from work to play. Scratchy… violins? Cellos? Something on an unreliable record player. He can never remember the tune, but he can remember the feeling of it cradling them. A weight against his chest that he can almost still feel. Barely there and not just because the memory is faint but because it’s _him_ and he’s _small_. A hand twined with his own, another resting on his shoulder. Nothing else. Maybe nothing else existed in that moment. And the dance went… it went… it…

Steve would probably teach him the steps again if he asked, but he doesn’t want to ask. He’s sick of Steve giving. He wants Steve to be able to take something. It infuriates him as much as it terrifies him. If he concentrates until his temples ache and his mind roars back at him he can feel the gentle sway. The sway, not the position of hands or where to put his feet but the sway! The smell of Steve’s hair but now how he turned his head, the sound of his breathing but not where to lead that breathing to. It’s like being taunted by his own mind. A memory – memories really, all becoming one – that he knows he should have, should cherish above all others, and a chunk of it is missing. The understanding of how to recreate it, to take Steve in his arms and give him this one small gift of a living memory, is missing. It’s not fair. It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not _fair_. 

There are some things Bucky aches to remember, but there are some things he doesn’t need to. They’re a part of who he is. You don’t need to remember how to breathe, you don’t need to remember how your heart beats. It just does. It’s a hell of a dance, maybe the dance that will outlive all others. The music never stops. It’s the grumble in his throat at seven when Steve wakes him up, the scrape of a plate on a table as he forces some sort of breakfast on Steve, the ringing in his ears as Steve springs into an action that’s equal parts heroic and stupid, the contented hum in Steve’s throat when Bucky rolls into bed at night. 

The steps are a little different these days. The kiss to Steve’s forehead is a little trickier now that Steve’s taller than him, but he makes it work. Their silent communication has grown into an even more complex language than it was before. Their bodies have changed, and when they’re exhausted and leaning against each other on the sofa at the end of the day it’s hard not to notice. But the feeling in his chest is still light and familiar. Steve kisses him now. Properly, on the mouth. He kisses back. For real this time, not like it was before when it was just ‘practice’ and they’d lie to themselves that this was what pals did when they got as close as they had. They take each other’s hand in public without worrying that it'll be obvious, that someone will _see_. It’s completely, blindingly new, and yet it slips naturally into the dance. 

There’s a dance that Bucky can’t remember the steps to, and he doesn’t need to. They invented the damn thing, and they’ll keep re-inventing it. He doesn’t need steps, he just needs to hold Steve and sway.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not seeing End Game tonight so here's something soft and short I assume we're all going to need real soon! Title is from the bob crosby song of the same name. My writing blog is on tumblr with the same url as my ao3 account OR my main blog is zarduhasselfrau!


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